Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
46th out of 126 books
—
159 voters
There Will Be Dragons (The Council Wars #1)
by
John Ringo
In the future there is no want, no war, no disease nor ill-timed death. The world is a paradise-and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive. But scattered across the face of the earth are communities which have returned to the n...more
Mass Market Paperback, 752 pages
Published
June 18th 2006
by Baen
(first published 2003)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
2,475)
I cannot escape post-apocalyptic sword & sorcery series. I started There Will Be Dragons because it was a free download and I've read a few of Ringo's collaborations (always as the junior partner), so I had no idea what it was before I began reading.
I like the concept: 45th century society abruptly regresses from "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it", but for some silly reason they all regress to vaguely medieval technology -- lots of reenactors and muscle-powered recreational f...more
I like the concept: 45th century society abruptly regresses from "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it", but for some silly reason they all regress to vaguely medieval technology -- lots of reenactors and muscle-powered recreational f...more
"In the future there is no want, no war, no disease nor ill-timed death. The world is a paradise — and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net falls out and goes to war. Everywhere people who have never known a moment of want or pain are left wondering how to survive. "
Historical re-enactors and Society of Creative Anachronism types are best suited for survival & start to rebuild society.
It's a bit of a slow-starter, as the Fall doesn't happen until about a fifth of the...more
Historical re-enactors and Society of Creative Anachronism types are best suited for survival & start to rebuild society.
It's a bit of a slow-starter, as the Fall doesn't happen until about a fifth of the...more
Oh RETCH! This is terrible. Author never bothered to think through implications of his technology*, nor to research supposed basic "problem" in the real world**. Book is seriously degrading to women and to top it all off, the author flung away his chance at redeeming himself with a satisfying ending in order to have a(nother) pointless battle between two Manly Men.
If you're a jingoistic 15 year old boy, comforted by seeing women abused and degraded, you'll love it. I'm not any of those things, a...more
If you're a jingoistic 15 year old boy, comforted by seeing women abused and degraded, you'll love it. I'm not any of those things, a...more
Jul 20, 2012
Marc Jentzsch
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
sci fi fans who are also survivalists
Recommended to Marc by:
the cover, rawr
Shelves:
fantasy
I really wanted to like this book, but it quickly devolved into a weird soup of survivalist-porn with extremely ham-fisted political overtones and a narrative distaste for women. I don't mind a book with a message, even if it's one I disagree with, but I want it to be an invitation to ponder the subject using the story as case, even in my pulp novels (see Joseph Conrad or Sir ACD).
I'd say that maybe I'm just being overly sensitive, but I got the same vibe from another other book by Ringo that I...more
I'd say that maybe I'm just being overly sensitive, but I got the same vibe from another other book by Ringo that I...more
in the 41st century mankind lives in a utopia. People do whatever they feel like while a computer program called 'mother' makes sure that nobody kills somebody else and that everyone gets all the energy they need. 'Mother' is overseen by a council of humans. It has split into 2 factions. One wants to just keep things the way they are, the other wants to return to the "good old days of hard work and character building" with them in charge, of course. A coup happens. In the ensuing fight, earth is...more
I really wanted to like this book. Imagine a society with no real hunger, poverty or war where the bottom suddenly drops out and people find themselves in a world for which they have no relevant skills. It sounds fascinating!
Sadly, that is not the book that was delivered. The entire book seems to have been written by a hormonal and socially-awkward teenage boy. The female characters, especially, are one-dimensional and more objects of male sexual desire than anything else. Well, that and as a ve...more
Sadly, that is not the book that was delivered. The entire book seems to have been written by a hormonal and socially-awkward teenage boy. The female characters, especially, are one-dimensional and more objects of male sexual desire than anything else. Well, that and as a ve...more
I didn't finish the book, but through no fault of my own. The site I was reading it at won't let me read it anymore. The reason I didn't like this book was that I felt it was demeaning to women, for various reasons, but I will only mention one. A female character speaks about how horrible it is for women to have babies physically, instead machines should bear and give birth to babies; at least that's the way the author writes about it in his book.
For one thing the author does not know anything a...more
For one thing the author does not know anything a...more
This is the first volume in Ringo’s vision of a fallen utopia. Mankind is free of want and ill-timed death. People can do what they wish with their long lives. But there is trouble in paradise. The council that rules the “Net”, the information system that provides for mankind, has fallen out in factional disputes that lead to war. Mother, a watchdog AI, does not interfere very much after the fall, but certain restrictions apply. For example, the amount of explosive force that can be applied is l...more
This book was not bad; it was just really boring. The world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. What follows is about 600 pages of people setting up a society with pre-industrial technology. They have some mild adventures along the way, but there is a lot of the author, John Ringo, holding forth on tyranny, despotism, and gun rights. A lot of the characters are lifted whole cloth from Ringo's previous series, the Posleen books. The bad guys are really really bad; there is not a lot of moral...more
I wrote an incredibly long review but Goodreads ate it and I'm definitely not up to write all of that again. So, summing up, a fast read and a page turner, set in a world where science has become quasi-magic and suddenly fails, leaving people to rebuild society around Renaissance faires and reenactor camps.
The setting is interesting, though it can be annoying that all the wonderful things that are set-up in the first fifth of the book are then suddenly destroyed and dismissed (in the beginning...more
The setting is interesting, though it can be annoying that all the wonderful things that are set-up in the first fifth of the book are then suddenly destroyed and dismissed (in the beginning...more
A fascinating look at a future society terribly dependent on technology and what happens when a political struggle ties up all the energy that powers that technology. The future of human civilization is in the hands of historical re-enactors and anyone with enough strength to grab the power. I loved the conflict and struggle within the plot and the characters. One of the most poignant moments is when one of the main viewpoint characters realizes that even though he would readily go back to the w...more
Free download from baen.com
1 like · like · see review
A fun series that is both sci-fi and fantasy. Set in the future and the explanation for everything is (very) advanced technology, but civilization regresses to a primarily pre-industrial level due to a fallout within the ruling body. However, due to the technology that had been available, it is a world that includes dragons, wyverns, merpeople, and other fantastical creatures. The series details the attempt to rebuild some kind of civilization after complete global collapse and the war between t...more
I am not a fan of his "american culture was / is the best" (next to rome) propaganda or how he never seems to think through all the implications of no power/technology and practicaly no knowhow and a world with only a few cities, no streets and no ground transportion short of horses. Nor do I like his way of seriously degrading the female part of the population.
But it was interesting enough to read the next book in this series, so I will wait and see what happens next.
But it was interesting enough to read the next book in this series, so I will wait and see what happens next.
A rather captivating book that sucks you into the world and makes you care about the characters. Even when he's running off on some tangent about obscure military history or injecting some politics into the narrative (hard to tell whether those are Ringo's politics or the characters'), everything remains relevant and fits in with the world he's created. It's kind of interesting, though, how even when the story is set 2000 years in the future, people are still familiar with the US Constitution an...more
Catching up books I read by looking thru past journals I found this one. I read this on the plane to and from Alaska. I really liked the whole end of the world as we knew it premise, but it took me a while to get into. It got a bit wierd at the end but I never did start the second book. I did read other John Ringos because I really like his writing. Guess I will have to look for the rest of this series.
Feb 18, 2012
David
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
military-science-fiction
This book was surprisingly good. Set in a future complete with nanotechnology and AIs, it still manages to be mostly a fantasy yarn. Usually I consider a fantasy genre story fantasy only if it contains magic, otherwise it's an alternate history. Hence my disappointment with Game of Thrones...I don't like alternate histories. In this book, the place of magic is taken by the science of the future, and it works very well. I can't think of another book that does this.
My only previous contact with th...more
My only previous contact with th...more
Imagine a sci-fi story that suddenly creates a true fantasy world, with intelligent dragons, unicorns, orcs, elves and no gun powder. That's what happens in There will be dragons.
Now you've got a whole different kind of post apocalyptic story.
I enjoyed this books so much I read the whole series on my Kindle (available from Baen webscriptions for free BTW) in less than a week.
Now you've got a whole different kind of post apocalyptic story.
I enjoyed this books so much I read the whole series on my Kindle (available from Baen webscriptions for free BTW) in less than a week.
In a future where technology has made life easy for mankind, a war between two factions on the ruling council drains the power that runs everything. Mankind is plunged into a world where there is no food, no transport, no medical nanotechnology, no changing one's form, no help at all and only they can save themselves. Some choose to rise to the challenge and build a new society and some, of course, choose to prey on the weak as the world falls back to a feudal system last seen in the dark ages.
I...more
I...more
Ringo has created an interesting blend of SciFi and Fantasy in this series. The world's nanotech utopia collapses when a power struggle literally uses all the energy in the battles for dominance. The characters and their fight to survive are compelling. There are some serious thought provoking elements also - our society is as dependent on technology as Ringo's and many people today have no idea how the day to day tech works. Most would be unable to repair simple machines, grow food or make tool...more
Read because I was bored and could put it on my Blackberry for free. Bland characters and unoriginal plot were the good parts. I could even deal with the adolescent fantasy elements. But after the propaganda and amateur rape psychology lectures, boredom won't be enough to get me to slog through the next in the series.
May 24, 2008
Lisa
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Lisa by:
Myles B
Shelves:
2008
I actually enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. The themes are revealed almost immediately and aren't terribly original, so after the introduction I thought perhaps I wouldn't like it. However, once the book got going, the writing was good enough, and the characters interesting enough, that it really kept me interested. There were spots throughout the book where an editor could have helped clean up some sentence structure. I loved the surprise at the end--in a reversal of many sto...more
Strange, absorbing, cool, completely readable. Be prepared to be sucked into this world of Ringo’s… and be glad that he’s already written a sequel, which I started almost as soon as I finished this one. I’m so glad to have discovered a new (to me) author!
He's not the greatest writer (some of his stuff bores me stupid, and it all seems to be written with a right wing, survivalist, anti government smugness that jars me) but I quite liked this novel, so I have sourced the sequel and will see how it goes.
I love this book. Reading again for the third or fourth time. Finally found copies to own of books 2-4 around Christmas. Had to start over from the beginning so that I could read book 4. Waiting impatiently still for author to write book 5.
Jun 10, 2013
Heidi
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
yourlibrary,
readbutunowned
"I read this book using DailyLit's email program, and really enjoyed it. An idyllic technology-based society suffers a failure of technology and has to rebuild their society while fighting a civil war against a tyrannical and insane leader determined to change the world "for its own good." Fascinating political, military, and societal themes, guaranteed to appeal to any urban homesteader or survivalist. The only time I feel the story slows down is the military training sequence, but I enjoyed it...more
A world ends novel--technology collaspes for the vast majority and who will survive? Brings up the questions of what is good and bad. Who decides?
Having a like for non technology leads this survival story. Best of the series
Having a like for non technology leads this survival story. Best of the series
I got this free so was surprised it was a pretty good read. It was a bit slow starting but once it got going it really made me think about what would happen if we suddenly lost our power grid and were without all our technology.
This book was a very standard read. The premise it was built upon was incredibly unique and attention grabbing. The book seemed to loose some of its luster as it progressed. The writing was standard, the characterization was also standard. Once "the fall" happened, the plot was so predictable it nearly made me put the book away unfinished.
If you are in the mood for something escapist, then this is your book.
My full review can be read at bookwormblues.blogspot.com
If you are in the mood for something escapist, then this is your book.
My full review can be read at bookwormblues.blogspot.com
The book started out a little slow, and I thought that it was going to be just an okay book. Then the "fall" occured shortly thereafter and the book really took-off. Very good.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sword & Sorce...: [Series - The Council Wars] There Will Be Dragons - by John Ringo | 5 | 13 | Mar 11, 2013 02:48pm |
John Ringo is a prolific author who has written in a wide variety of genres. His early life included a great deal of travel. He visited 23 foreign countries, and attended fourteen different schools. After graduation Ringo enlisted in the US military for four years, after which he studied marine biology.
In 1999 he wrote and published his first novel "A Hymn Before Battle", which proved successful....more
More about John Ringo...
In 1999 he wrote and published his first novel "A Hymn Before Battle", which proved successful....more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Shall I show him in or tell him to go find a short and unpleasant route to hell?”
—
24 people liked it
More quotes…
Why do you assume nanites cannot turn you into a man? For that matter, why...more
Mar 01, 2012 01:23am